Religion in Foreign Policy: John Mansfield on Recent Supreme Court Rulings
As part of the Religion in Foreign Policy series, the PCR Project will host a discussion focusing further on the legal aspects of U.S. foreign assistance and religious groups. The first two sessions, held earlier in the year, brought together experts to look at obstacles in the way of successful assistance delivery abroad and possible solutions involving national security exceptions.
For the next meeting, to be held on Friday, July 25, PCR welcomes Professor John Mansfield of Harvard University, author of The Religion Clauses of the First Amendment and Foreign Relations, a foundational article published in the DePaul Law Review in 1986. Professor Mansfield will lead a discussion on two recent Supreme Court rulings and how they relate to the Establishment Clause and its extraterritorial application. The cases are:
- Boumediene vs. Bush - June 12, 2008
- Munaf v. Geren - June 12, 2008
This discussion series comes from the findings of the report Mixed Blessings: U.S. Engagement with Religion in Conflict-Prone Settings, released in July 2007, and posits that there are ways to improve how the U.S. government deals with the sensitive issue of religion in its work outside of the United States.
